Weekly Edition #47
Art by Henri Martin
The First Straw by Jeffrey McDaniel
I used to think love was two people sucking
on the same straw to see whose thirst was stronger,
but then I whiffed the crushed walnuts of your nape,
traced jackals in the snow-covered tombstones of your teeth.
I used to think love was a non-stop saxophone solo
in the lungs, till I hung with you like a pair of sneakers
from a phone line, and you promised to always smell
the rose in my kerosene. I used to think love was terminal
pelvic ballet, till you let me jog beside while you pedaled
all over hell on the menstrual bicycle, your tongue
ripping through my prairie like a tornado of paper cuts.
I used to think love was an old man smashing a mirror
over his knee, till you helped me carry the barbell
of my spirit back up the stairs after my car pirouetted
in the desert. You are my history book. I used to not believe
in fairy tales till I played the dunce in sheep’s clothing
and felt how perfectly your foot fit in the glass slipper
of my ass. But then duty wrapped its phone cord
around my ankle and yanked me across the continent.
And now there are three thousand miles between the u
and s in esophagus. And being without you is like standing
at a cement-filled wall with a roll of Yugoslavian nickels
and making a wish. Some days I miss you so much
I’d jump off the roof of your office building
just to catch a glimpse of you on the way down. I wish
we could trade left eyeballs, so we could always see
what the other sees. But you’re here, I’m there,
and we have only words, a nightly phone call - one chance
to mix feelings into syllables and pour into the receiver,
hope they don’t disassemble in that calculus of wire.
This week's poetry curation is on the theme of love. Here are some of my recent discoveries:
"I want you and you are not here. I pause
in this garden, breathing the colour thought is
before language into still air. Even your name
is a pale ghost and, though I exhale it again
and again, it will not stay with me. Tonight
I make you up, imagine you, your movements clearer
than the words I have you say you said before.
Wherever you are now, inside my head you fix me
with a look, standing here whilst cool late light
dissolves into the earth. I have got your mouth wrong,
but still it smiles. I hold you closer, miles away,
inventing love, until the calls of nightjars
interrupt and turn what was to come, was certain,
into memory. The stars are filming us for no one." -Miles Away by Carol Ann Duffy
"Home isn’t here. It went away with you,
Disappearing in the space of a breath,
In the time one takes to open a foreknown letter.
My fists are bruised from beating on the ground.
There are clouds between me and the watery light.
Truly, I try to flourish, to find pleasure
Without an endless reference to you
Who made the days and years seem worth enduring."
-from Winter Song by Carolyn Kizer
Art by Richard Diebenkorn
"We have not long to love.
Light does not stay.
The tender things are those
we fold away.
Coarse fabrics are the ones
for common wear.
In silence I have watched you
comb your hair.
Intimate the silence,
dim and warm.
I could but did not, reach
to touch your arm.
I could, but do not, break
that which is still.
(Almost the faintest whisper
would be shrill.)
So moments pass as though
they wished to stay.
We have not long to love.
A night. A day…." -We Have Not Long To Love by Tennessee Williams
"i would like to make
love to you a hundred times with the shuddering knowledge
of you, with your frozen smile and untraceable fingertips.
you with your indecipherable dreams.
because i am doomed to live with you even when i am
without you – you with your incomplete shoulders. you
with your rainbow colored lips.
you with your empty hands. your perfumed silence, your
perfect elegance. you, with the sunlight that leaks out of
your darkness and into my world."
-from Before Everything Is Over by George Wallace
"There is no chance we will fall apart
There is no chance
There are no parts" -The New Physicality of Long-Distance Love by June Jordan
"my creed is love & you are its only tenet.
my love has made me selfish.
i cannot exist without you.
i am forgetful of everything
but seeing you again.
my life seems to stop there;
i see no further. you have absorb’d me.
you have ravish’d me away
by a power i cannot resist;
& yet i could resist till i saw you;
& even since i have seen you i have
endeavored often to reason against
the reasons of my love.
i can do that no more–
the pain would be too great.
my love is selfish.
i cannot breathe without you." -from John Keats' Love Letters To Fanny Brawne
Recommended Listening:
Always On My Mind - Wayne Carson
Time Moves Slow - BADBADNOTGOOD feat. Sam Herring
Memory Box - Peter Cat Recording Co. (Bismillah is out! Go listen naao + read my interview with the band here.)
Joro - Gauley Bhai (Bangalore represent!)
Links of the Week:
Business Lessons From Other People’s Jobs
The Man Who Traveled Nowhere in Time (This was powerfully unnerving)
Change Your Story, Transform Your Life | John Sharp An artist looks at Grimms’ fairy tales and finds sexist stereotypes that are common in India (my interview with Akshita Chandra on her art project Grimm Reality)
"remember,
loneliness is still time spent
with the world" -from Going Home With Ocean Vuong
Overlooked, a series telling the stories of remarkable people who never received an obit in their publication.
mood captured via this GIF by Maremonstrum